In this Awesome★ Photoshop tutorial, i’m going to show you how to create a surreal composition using photo manipulation and illustration techniques. This one is two-part tutorial, here is the first part. Have fun
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In this Awesome★ Photoshop tutorial, i’m going to show you how to create a surreal composition using photo manipulation and illustration techniques. This one is a two-parts tutorial, here is the first part. Have fun.

Here is the Final Image
Before we start lets see the final image we’ll create through out this tutorial. You can download the layered PSD document here.

Create a New Document
Lets start by creating a new document which is 1900 pixels wide and 1200 pixels at a resolution of 300 pixels/inch, make sure Color Mode is set to RGB and name it "Desert Fish".

Open the Earth Texture
First we’ll work on the cracked earth texture and make it seamless. Open the cracked earth image in Photoshop. Duplicate the Background and name it "Horizontal". Get the Rectangular Marquee Tool, set Style to Fixed Size and set Width to 165 px and Height to 205 px. Click on the canvas and place the selection at the top right corner. Drag one vertical and one horizontal guide and snap them around the selection. Then deselect by hitting Command + D [Ctrl + D for Windows].

Horizontally Seamless
Get the Move Tool and holding down the Shift key [to prevent dragging vertically] drag the "Horizontal" layer right and snap the left edge of the layer to the vertical guide.

Horizontally Seamless
Get the Polygonal Lasso Tool and make a selection like in the below image over the craks, leaving the black crack lines outside the selection and hit Backspace to clear and deselect. Hit Command + E to merge the layers.

Vertically Seamless
Duplicate the Background and name it "Vertical". Get the Move Tool and holding down the Shift key drag the "Vertical" layer up and snap the bottom edge of the layer to the horizontal guide.

Vertically Seamless
Get the Polygonal Lasso Tool, hit Command+H to hide the guides for now beacuse the Lasso Tool will snap to them and make it diffucult to select. Now make a selection like in the below image over the cracks, leaving the black crack lines outside the selection and hit Backspace to clear. Hit Command + E to merge the layers again. Hit Command+H again to show the guides.

Make it Seamless
Get the Crop Tool and make a selection like in the below image, then drag the selection and align it to the top right of the document. Double click inside to crop. Now we have a seamless ground texture.

Create the Sky
Go back to "Desert Fish.psd" document, create a new layer and name it "Sky". Get the Gradient Tool, set Foreground Color to #bec5ab, Background Color to #79989c. Pick Foreground to Background gradient and apply a Linear gradient like in the below image.

The Ground
Create a new layer. Fill it with any color, hit Command+T and set Horizontal Scale to 225% and apply. Apply a Pattern Overlay Layer Style using these settings: Blend Mode => Normal, Pattern => Cracked Earth, Scale => 100%. Now we should merge the pattern with the layer so create a new layer on top and name it "Ground". Select both "Ground" and "Layer 1" layers and hit Command + E to merge.